With college football schedules across the country in flux amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the SEC announced Thursday afternoon that it has moved to a 10-game, conference-only schedule for the 2020 season. The SEC is also pushing the start of its season to Saturday, Sept. 26, what was originally scheduled to be Week 4 of the 2020 campaign.
With the shift of the start of its season to Sept. 26, the SEC Championship Game will be pushed back two weeks to Saturday, Dec. 19. This creates flexibility amongst teams with two opportunities for makeup games as the adjusted schedule will feature a midseason bye week for each school and an open date for all programs on Dec. 12, one week before the title game.
It is unknown at this time how the SEC will fill out the additional two games of its conference-only schedule as the revised set of games will be announced by the league at a later date. SEC members traditionally play eight conference games each season: six inside their respective divisions, one permanent cross-division opponent and one rotational cross-division opponent.
The ACC has made its decision about college football this fall, as well as its other fall Olympic sports. The conference announced Wednesday that its football season will begin play during the week of Sept. 7, originally scheduled as Week 2 of the 2020 season. ACC teams -- plus partial league member Notre Dame -- will play 11 games, including 10 ACC contests and one nonconference game against an opponent that resides in the home state of league members.
Notre Dame will partake in the festivities and play a full 10-game ACC conference schedule, making it eligible to compete in the ACC Championship Game as a temporary 15th member of the conference in 2020. The ACC championship will be contested between the two teams at the top of the standings as the ACC will not play with divisions in 2020. The ACC Championship Game will be played on either Dec. 12 or Dec. 19 at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina.
All of Notre Dame's nonconference games will still be televised on NBC, and accrued the television revenue -- from both Notre Dame and the other 14 ACC schools -- will be tallied and distributed equally among the 15 schools.
The completed schedule, which the ACC says "will be released in the future," will be at least 13 weeks long, allowing each team two open dates. These will either be used as off weeks or as possible replacement dates should there be interruptions.
As far as the nonconference games each team will play, programs are in control of scheduling those contests; however, all nonconference games must be played in the ACC school's home state. This preserves potential annual marquee rivalry games such as Florida State-Florida, Louisville-Kentucky, Georgia Tech-Georgia and Clemson-South Carolina.
